Admin support for psychology practices in Australia, honestly compared

We run one of the services on this list. DotVA is ours, and we place offshore VAs, which makes us the odd one out: nearly every other provider we could verify for psychology practices is Australian-based. That is the most important fact on this page, so it comes first. If you want an Australian-resident person touching your practice, most of this table is the right place to look and we are not.

The method is the same as our comparison of Australian VA agencies. Every claim about another provider comes from its own website, checked in November 2026 and linked in the table. Where a figure is not published we write “not stated publicly” rather than guess. We left out four names that come up in AI answers and directory listings because we could not verify them: their websites were parked, gone or blocked our checks.

If you are earlier than shortlisting and want to see what a psychology VA actually does all week, start with our psychology practice page.

The services at a glance

Service	Published price	Where the team is	Model	Software named	Terms
DotVA virtual assistant for psychologists (that’s us)	$12-17/hr admin, $18-25/hr specialist, AUD ex GST, from 10 hrs/week	Philippines, working Australian business hours	One dedicated VA who works to your direction	Halaxy, Cliniko, Zanda, Splose, Coreplus, Nookal	No lock-in contract; stop any time in the first 14 days, then 30 days’ notice; free replacement any time
Your Phones Covered	Australian-team call plans from $7/week to $199/week ex GST; offshore tier from $6/week; diary and admin add-ons extra (Admin Unlimited $199/month); their solo psychologist example is $150-350 a month	Australian receptionists on its psychology page; its pricing page also sells a lower-cost Manila team tier	Phone answering and virtual reception, with diary management and admin support add-ons	Works with any online diary	No lock-in; 7-day free trial
Paperless Admin	From $180/week incl GST; each additional psychologist $80/week (GST basis not stated)	Brisbane call centre	Virtual reception and admin package (referral paperwork, Medicare rebates, invoicing), psychologists only	Halaxy, Power Diary, Health Kit	No lock-in; FAQ says 4 weeks’ written notice (its terms page states 28 days in one clause and 2 weeks in another)
Time Well Spent	Not stated publicly	Melbourne office	Shared team with a dedicated practice manager	Halaxy, Cliniko, Zanda, Splose, Nookal, Prac Suite	Try for three months, or a 12-month term with 50% off onboarding
Insight Admin	$248/week for 3 hrs, $495/week for 6 hrs, $720/week for 9 hrs (GST basis not stated); Halaxy setup from $1,200	Melbourne	One dedicated VA, the same person each week	Halaxy	Flexible; notice not stated publicly
Mind Tasker	$45/hr + GST	Canberra	One person for a set number of hours each week	Halaxy only, plus Xero	Not stated publicly; one 3-6 hr/week opening listed when checked
Therapy Assist (therapyassist.com.au)	$200/week for 4 hrs to $750/week for 15 hrs (GST basis not stated); weekends +20%	Sydney hours; location not stated	The same person each week; phone support packages “coming soon”	Halaxy, Cliniko	No lock-in; two weeks’ notice to end the service
Therapy Assist (Melbourne, Zanda-listed)	$165/week for 3 hrs to $495/week for 9 hrs (GST basis not stated); Halaxy or Zanda setup from $550	Melbourne	Weekly hour packages, run by a provisional psychologist	Halaxy, Zanda	Not stated publicly
The VA Circle	Not stated publicly	South Australia, servicing Australia-wide	Boutique team: ongoing support, one-off projects and a 4-6 week systems audit	Halaxy, Zanda, Stripe, Xero	Not stated publicly
Little Big Help VA	Quote on enquiry (prices ex GST)	Australia-wide	Small team with one dedicated contact	Halaxy, Zanda, Medical Objects, NovoPsych	Not stated publicly

Checked on each provider’s own pages on 10 November 2026. Two separate businesses trade as Therapy Assist; both are listed with their own websites. “Not stated publicly” means we could not find the figure on the provider’s public pages; it is an observation, not a criticism.

Our row in full is on pricing. If a 30-minute call beats ten tabs, book a discovery call, and if another row fits your practice better we will tell you on the call.

Three products share one label

The table mixes three different things, and most of the confusion in this market comes from comparing across them.

1. Phone answering and reception services (Your Phones Covered, Paperless Admin). Someone answers your line, books into your diary and takes messages while you are in session. Your Phones Covered sells diary management and admin support as add-ons. Paperless Admin’s package also covers referral paperwork, payments and Medicare rebates, for psychologists only. Fast to start, and the right answer when missed calls are the main problem.
2. Onshore psychology specialists working a few hours a week (Mind Tasker, both Therapy Assists, Insight Admin, The VA Circle, Little Big Help VA). Australian-based, built around psychology and allied health practices, and two of them run by someone with a psychology qualification. You pay for that: roughly $45-83 an hour on the published prices, and several are deliberately capacity-limited, so there can be a wait.
3. An offshore dedicated VA working 10 or more hours a week (DotVA). One person inside your practice software for a full scope: intake, referral and Mental Health Treatment Plan chasing, session-count tracking, rebates and debtor follow-up. At $12-17 an hour, 10 hours a week costs about $120-170 a week ex GST, about what three hours a week costs at Mind Tasker ($135 plus GST) or the Melbourne Therapy Assist ($165), and less than Insight Admin’s 3-hour package ($248). The trade is an overseas assistant, which brings APP 8 obligations covered below.

How to compare them

1. Calls or admin? Count last fortnight’s missed calls and your weekly hours of non-clinical admin. Calls alone points to an answering service. Admin points to an assistant.
2. How many hours? Under 5 hours a week, an onshore specialist’s small packages fit. At 10 or more, the hourly gap between onshore and offshore becomes the biggest number in your budget.
3. Which software? Mind Tasker supports Halaxy only, Insight Admin calls Halaxy its home base, and Therapy Assist (therapyassist.com.au) names Halaxy and Cliniko. If you run Splose, Nookal or Coreplus, check support before anything else.
4. Onshore or offshore? This is a privacy and preference decision, not just a price one. Read the next section before you decide.
5. What are the exit terms? Published notice periods run from two weeks to 30 days, and Time Well Spent offers an optional 12-month term. Ask for terms in writing.

Privacy: the question psychologists should ask first

Psychology records are the most sensitive files in allied health, so start here rather than with price.

Onshore providers keep the work in Australia, so no overseas assistant is involved and APP 8 only comes into it if the provider itself sends data offshore. You still need a confidentiality agreement and to set their access deliberately.

Offshore assistants, including ours, are, in most cases, a cross-border disclosure under APP 8 of the Australian Privacy Principles. You stay the responsible entity, and an overseas recipient’s breach of the APPs can be treated as your breach. Our guide to hiring an offshore VA legally covers the obligations. In practice the risk is managed by scoping access, not by trust: Halaxy, Zanda, Splose and Coreplus all support role-based permissions, so a VA’s login can be blocked from clinical notes entirely and see only the diary, billing and correspondence. We add a signed confidentiality agreement before day one and a data-handling addendum mirroring the APPs, including APP 8, on request. The full setup is on our data security page.

If carrying that obligation is not something you want, that is a fair reason to choose an onshore provider from the table, whatever the price difference.

Who should pick whom

• You only need calls answered while you are in session: an answering service. Your Phones Covered for the lowest entry price, or Paperless Admin if you also want billing and Medicare rebates handled by a psychology-only team in Brisbane.
• A few hours a week, Australian-based, and you run Halaxy: Mind Tasker at $45 an hour plus GST, or Insight Admin for one dedicated person with phone support in its larger packages.
• You want someone with a psychology background: the Melbourne Therapy Assist, run by a provisional psychologist; Insight Admin, whose founder has a Bachelor of Psychology; or Paperless Admin, whose founder is a psychologist.
• A group practice that wants a team and a practice manager: Time Well Spent, which says most of its clients are psychologists and other allied health practices, and has supported practices since 2006.
• A one-off Halaxy or Zanda setup or a systems clean-up: The VA Circle’s 4-6 week audit, Insight Admin’s Halaxy setup, or the Melbourne Therapy Assist’s setup service.
• A multidisciplinary allied health practice: Little Big Help VA, Time Well Spent and The VA Circle all serve the wider allied health field, and so do we. Our allied health virtual assistant services comparison covers that field in full.
• 10 or more hours a week of intake, Better Access and billing admin, at an offshore rate, with notes scoped out of access: that is the practice we built DotVA for. See what the work looks like on our psychology practice page, the Halaxy VA page or the psychologist virtual receptionist setup.

Run your own numbers

Price your hours on the VA cost calculator, check our tiers on pricing, and compare the software pages for Zanda, Cliniko and Splose if you are not on Halaxy. Counsellors and psychotherapists have their own page. If the right answer for your practice is one of the other names in the table, we would rather you find that out now than in month two.